Blaqneto and Block Bots *Updated*

We were planning on doing a live-stream about it but shit has gotten super busy and ya know we’re just gonna put it out here:

Over the past year or so, we (feel as though we) kinda been handed the short end of the stick in regards to certain things. Comics Twitter, specifically Indie Comics twitterm hasn’t really been the nicest home for us, though we’ve done our best to try and generally be nice to people that were nice to us.

That was until the Mark Waid/ AP/ Jawbreakers fiasco of 2018 that drug us through the mud and had us:

Wrongly connected to a certain internet hashtag movement, whos members haven’t always treated us the best. And

Urged us to drop our publisher because they were cowards….

There were a handful of people angry that were we didn’t drop our publishing deal immediately. Some came to our personal FaceBook Pages to let us know how angry they were…But the question really was… should we dropped our publishing deal for an incident that had nothing to do with us? Were we obligated to link arms with a fellow creator? Not really. And while we can go one a long deep dive on that, we released a statement, which you can find here.

The weird thing is Trent and I are comic fans ourselves and we know what its like to be treated like shit by creative teams….but here we were on the opposite side of it getting shat on for slights that didn’t have anything to do with us….into things never happened or were taken out of context….Or what OTHERS WRONGFULLY assumed.

Next dumb fucking thing we got dragged into was Mike S. Miller’s Comics Gate Alliance Poster. People, wrongly, on our behalf were upset that we were left off of this image, but the true fact was that we didn’t believe that we should be on it, since we were not Comics Gate. You can see our stance on the whole thing here.

But the other thing was, people thought it necessary to come out and speak FOR US or to tell people how WE felt….when they had no fucking idea because they didn’t fucking ask us. See this video Apology.

What followed next REALLY peeved us off. Some people took to using us as diversity shield to defend themselves against SJWS. Which, ironically is something that SJWs themselves do. Employ Minority Shields in order to defend their behavior. This was insulting on many different fronts because it ignored the work that Luigi, Trent, Liz and Capucine have done on the book and reduced Regina down to: “That Bi-sexual Character I support because some black dude wrote her.”. Which is also insulting. Eventually all that culminated in me telling people to go eat a bag of dicks out of frustration. But also…it really showed us who our friends were. Rather than DM-ing or messaging us….some decided that it would be better to be snarky….

The best thing about friends is that they’re always ready to kick you while your down. This got old quick. We blocked this person soon after along with another. Funny enough, both would later assume (wrongfully) that they were caught in our block bot. Nope.
See the thing is about twitter, you can block, mute and all that shit….but folks will still stalk you and shit-talk you to the point where you’re REALLY unsure where Comedy.com ends and real life threats actually begins. Thankfully, Trent and I have at least (I hope) settled at least one grudge. But there’s also something we learned from that: It’ll never end because people only have half the story but they’re fully angry.

Some people are upset about around November/December of last year I was mocking Comics Gate with: “Renfamous was right.” There’s a few out-of-context screenshots floating around with that, and people are upset…yet they don’t know why.Quick back story, VOX Day made a Comics Gate imprint, pissed off Comics Gate fans (rightfully so.) But the joke…the meme there was obviously, with Vox Day making that imprint they instantly became what Renfamous accused them of. Which, love her or hate her, Ren is a GRADE A shitposter who’s skills should be respected. Hell, I even tip my hat to War Campaign for their memes, though I personally think they should just use real dicks instead of dildos but that’s just me.

This same thing, though, is used to criticize us for being evil or anti-Comics Gate. The truth of the matter is: WE DON’T CARE. WE MAKE FUN OF EVERYONE.

Again some people don’t understand what neutral actually means. And when internet hashtag groups feel their above criticism or being memed…well…we’re going to criticize them and meme them.

That being said we’re not innocent beings here either. Nor are we above criticism. But there’s a difference between: Your lettering needs work. and you retweeted someone I don’t like 4 months ago. I’m never buying your stupid shit again.

Honestly all of this non-stop drama and shit-slinging seriously began to distract from one of the 3 three things I’ve been hanging around twitter for.

Liz Finnegan’s football tweets

Shit posting

RAGS comic Promotion.

And eventually, it all came down to a boiling point to where both Trent and I decided that using a block-chain would give us a better semblance of peace. Rather than playing whack-a-mole with certain accounts, we’d just nuke everything from orbit and let god sort it all out. Also its easier to “unblock.” people than it is to hunt down accounts. Which is something other ‘pros’ wouldn’t do. But then again thats something we really can’t be proud of. Be angry at us for that decision, but when your friends that have absolutely nothing to do with this comic book twitter drama shit-slinging are having their faces used in memes….its gone too far.

So, there are people angry at us for using the blockchain, but not angry at those who pushed us into that corner.

There’s this excuse of: “You’re a professional, you should be able to take it.”

Well, no.

I’m not.

We’re not.

We are just fans, who’s (objectively) shitty fan-fiction got lucky and published. Trent and I never planned on turning this into a career, though I DO enjoy meeting fans and other creators at comic con (I got to meet Oh Nips!!!from Off Cells!) I honestly don’t PLAN on this being MY career. This was more of a hobby. And right now Comics is no longer a fun hobby to pursue fulltime.

The only positive about this, is we’ve turned our last meme into Blaqneto. And the fanart there has been fun.

Anyway, I know its the internet and people are going to only listen to halfthe story. But I will say this, everything really all just boils down to attitude. If you’re going to talk shit to creative teams, expect them to sling it back. We’re all human beings, not human punching bags. The real terrible crime here, is that my buddy Cody “Shane” has left twitter as our PR as he just got sick of the drama. Other’s have left too. Its a real shame that comics twitter is like this. Which, we’ll be leaving that platform and moving to Instagram if there’s anything else we do in the future. But for now, we got two more books to complete and we’re done. Gone.

And its sad to think, that all this dumb bullshit…was over comic books.